Collaborativenetworks:anewscientiﬁc discipline - · PDF...

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 16, 439–452, 2005© 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Collaborative networks: a new scientificdisciplineLUIS M. CAM AR IN HA-MA TOS

New University of Lisbon, Quinta da Torre 2829-516, Monte Caparica, PortugalE-mail: [email protected]

HA MIDEH AFS ARM ANESH

University of Amsterdam, The NetherlandsE-mail: [email protected]

Received February 2004 and accepted November 2004

Collaborative networks manifest in a large variety of forms, including virtual organizations,virtual enterprises, dynamic supply chains, professional virtual communities, collaborativevirtual laboratories, etc. A large body of empiric knowledge related to collaborative net-works is already available, but there is an urgent need to consolidate this knowledge andbuild the foundations for a more sustainable development of this area. The establishmentof a scientific discipline for collaborative networks is a strong instrument in achieving thispurpose. In this article the main characteristics of a “discipline” are analyzed in the con-text of collaborative networks, showing that the pre-conditions necessary for building thisnew discipline are available.

Keywords: Collaborative networks, virtual organizations, virtual enterprises, professionalvirtual communities, virtual breeding environments

1. Introduction

The notion of “network” is nowadays a centralissue in many fields including social sciences,communications, computer science, physics, andeven biology and ecosystems (Dorogovtsev andMendes, 2003; Barabasi, 2003). Among the var-ious types of networks, of special relevance arecollaborative networks. A collaborative network(CN) is constituted by a variety of entities (e.g.,organizations and people) that are largely auton-omous, geographically distributed, and heteroge-neous in terms of their: operating environment,culture, social capital, and goals. Neverthelessthese entities collaborate to better achieve com-mon or compatible goals, and whose interac-tions are supported by computer network. Unlike

other networks, in CN collaboration is an inten-tional property that derives from the shared beliefthat together the network members can achievegoals that would not be possible or would havea higher cost if attempted by them individu-ally.

A large variety of collaborative networks haveemerged during the last years as a result of thechallenges faced by both the business and sci-entific worlds. Advanced and highly integratedsupply chains, virtual enterprises, virtual organi-zations, professional virtual communities, valueconstellations, and collaborative virtual laborato-ries, represent only the tip of a major trend inwhich enterprises and professionals seek comple-mentarities and joint activities to allow them par-ticipate in competitive business opportunities, in

440 Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh

new markets and/or reaching scientific excellencefor innovative developments. Similar trends canbe found in the none-profit/social-oriented con-texts, e.g., in incident management, time bank,elderly care networks, etc.) (Camarinha-Matoset al., 2004a).

A large number of research projects in thisarea are carried out worldwide and a growingnumber of practical cases on different forms ofcollaborative networks are being reported. Thistrend has so far led to an extensive amountof empirical base knowledge that now needs tobe leveraged. In addition to the identificationof many required components, tools, and thebase infrastructure functionalities, awareness isbeing built and partially studied, even in thetraditional collaborative organizations, regardingthe fundamental configuration and operationalrules, as well as the behavioral patterns thatemerge. It is now urgent to consolidate and syn-thesize the existing knowledge, setting a soundfoundation for the future research and develop-ment in this area. The establishment of a sci-entific discipline for CNs is a strong instrumentin achieving this purpose (Camarinha-Matos, andAfsarmanesh, 2004b).

In fact during the last three decades the informa-tion and communication technologies have beenplaying a growing role in organizations, namely asan instrument to support integration and flexibil-ity. Figure 1 illustrates this process for the case ofindustrial companies.

As a result of these developments new scien-tific disciplines emerged or were consolidated, asis the case of Enterprise Engineering and Man-ufacturing Automation. The CNs emerge in thissequence.

But what is a scientific discipline?According to Liles et al. (1995), a discipline

has six basic characteristics: (1) focus of study, (2)paradigm, (3) reference disciplines, (4) principlesand practices, (5) research agenda, and (6) educa-tion and professionalism.

The following sections are based on an ear-lier presentation at the PRO-VE’04 conference(Camarinha-Matos, and Afsarmanesh, 2004b),and analyze each one of these characteristics inthe context of CN, showing that the pre-conditionsfor the establishment of this new discipline alreadyexist.

2. Focus of study

A discipline of CNs shall focus on the struc-ture, behavior, and evolving dynamics of networksof autonomous entities that collaborate to bet-ter achieve common or compatible goals. Thisstudy shall devise principles and practices for thedesign, analysis, simulation, implementation, andoperation of CNs.

During the last years various manifestations orvariants of CNs have emerged (Camarinha-Matos,and Afsarmanesh, 2004a) including for example:

• Virtual Enterprise (VE) — a temporaryalliance of enterprises that come togetherto share skills or core competencies andresources in order to better respond to busi-ness opportunities, and whose cooperationis supported by computer networks.

• Virtual Organization (VO) — a conceptsimilar to a VE, comprising a set of(legally) independent organizations thatshare resources and skills to achieve itsmission/goal, but that is not limited to analliance of for profit enterprises. A VE istherefore, a particular case of VO.

• Dynamic Virtual Organization — typicallyrefers to a VO that is established in a shorttime to respond to a competitive marketopportunity, and has a short life cycle, dis-solving when the short-term purpose of theVO is accomplished.

• Extended Enterprise — a concept typicallyapplied to an organization in which a dom-inant enterprise “extends” its boundaries toall or some of its suppliers. An extendedenterprise can be seen as a particular case ofa VE.

• VO Breeding Environment (VBE) — repre-sents an association (also known as cluster)or pool of organizations and their relatedsupporting institutions that have both thepotential and the will to cooperate witheach other through the establishment of a“base” long-term cooperation agreementand interoperable infrastructure. When abusiness opportunity is identified by onemember (acting as a broker), a subset ofthese organizations can be selected and thusforming a VE/VO.

Collaborative networks 441

Fig. 1. Brief historical perspective.

• Professional virtual community (PVC) —represents the combination of the conceptsof virtual community and professional com-munity. Virtual communities are definedas social systems of networks of individ-uals, who use computer technologies tomediate their relationships. Professionalcommunities provide environments for pro-fessionals to share the body of knowledgeof their professions such as similar workingcultures, problem perceptions, problem-solv-ing techniques, professional values, andbehavior.

• e-Science — is about global (i.e., networked)collaboration in key areas of science, and thenext generation of ICT infrastructure thatenables flexible, secure, coordinated resource-sharing among dynamic collections of indi-viduals, institutions, and resources.

• (Collaborative) Virtual laboratory (VL) —represents a heterogeneous and distributedproblem solving environment that enables agroup of researchers located in different geo-graphically spread centers to work together,sharing resources (equipments, tools, data,and information related to experiments, etc.).The VL can be seen as part of e-Science(Afsarmanesh et al., 2002).

The relationships among some of these con-cepts are illustrated in Fig. 2. Some common“patterns” and common elements can be observedin all these various manifestations (Fig. 3), e.g.,(i) all cases show networks of autonomous enti-ties (organizations, people, resources, or mixed)located in different locations, (ii) they are alldriven by common goals/intentions to be achievedby collaboration, and (iii) they all operate basedon agreed principles and interoperable infrastruc-tures to cope with their heterogeneity.

However one of the main weaknesses in thearea is the lack of appropriate definitions and for-mal theories, consistent modeling paradigms andformal modeling tools. There is not yet even acommon definition of the basic examples of CNs,such as the VO, PVC, breeding environments, VE,or collaborative virtual laboratories. For instance,some groups consider that VOs necessarily havea short duration while other groups accept thata VO can have a long duration (e.g. a supplychain as a particular case of VO). Authors fromthe management and economy areas do not con-sider computer networks being required for VOs,while people from the ICT area consider com-puter networks as the vital component of the VOconcept. This situation constitutes a major obsta-cle for interaction among experts from multiple


Fig. 2. Examples of CNs.

Fig. 3. Examples of manifestations of CNs.

disciplines, involved in this area, and creates anobstacle for the recognition of CNs as a new sci-entific paradigm.

Another question is which name should begiven to this new scientific discipline? In the lit-erature, a large variety of terms have been sug-gested to represent the various manifestations ofCNs. Some of these terms have a very short life,simply due to the “anxiety” observed in someresearch groups to always generate new names.Some other terms are better established that infact address and distinguish different forms of

this phenomenon. When establishing a disciplinewe should however aim at a name that can rep-resent the widest set of manifestations, not beinglinked to any particular sub-group or applicationdomain, and also being a term that intuitivelygives a first idea of the main elements of the wideparadigm. The term “virtual organization”, forinstance, is not very appropriate as it only repre-sents part of the paradigm (Fig. 3) and the term“virtual” is very often misleading. Therefore, wesuggest the term CNs as a more suitable name forthis new discipline.


Some authors, namely from the social sciencesarea, could argue that collaborative networks is atautology in the sense that collaboration alwaysrequire a network of connections. However, wecan also consider that not all networks involvecollaboration; therefore the term “collaborative”is used as an adjective to qualify a specific classof networks.

3. A new paradigm

The CNs are complex systems, emerging in manyforms in different application domains, and consistof many facets whose proper understanding re-quires the contribution from multiple disciplines.In fact the various manifestations of CNs havebeen studied by different branches of science,including the computer science, computer engi-neering, management, economy, sociology, indus-trial engineering, law, etc., to name a few. We arenow in the stage that Kuhn (1975) would call a pre-paradigmatic phase, in which the CNs phenom-enon is being described and interpreted in manydifferent ways, depending on the background ofthe researcher.

The acceptance of a new paradigm is not apacific process (Kuhn, 1975), as the establishedsciences and paradigms tend to resist the intro-duction of another “competitor”, and rather pre-fer to extend the existing sciences or fields andtheir associated rules to explain the new phenom-ena. This tension situation is further increasedby the multi-disciplinary nature of the phenom-ena, namely in the case where multiple traditionaldisciplines/branches of organized knowledge andprofessionals compete to claim and master thenew area. This is the clear case we observe todayfor collaborative networks.

As a good example of this strained behavior, sofar several of the established branches of sciencehave tried to use/extend their definition and behav-ior of the single enterprise paradigm to explain thecollaborative networks; e.g., the attempts in thedirection of “enterprise engineering” and “enter-prise architecture”, among others. Considering VEas just another form of an enterprise naturallyleads to consider that extending the existing mod-els of a single enterprise would be a promis-ing approach. However, anomalies appear when

the existing enterprise-centric models and theirextensions fall short of capturing the key fac-ets and specificities intrinsic in networked orga-nizations, as well as when realizing that the basefacilities of the applied discipline is not suffi-cient to properly represent and model all aspectsof the behavior of CNs. Instead of focusing onthe internal specificities and tight interconnec-tions among the internal components of an enter-prise, the focus in CNs must be directed to theexternal interactions among autonomous (and het-erogeneous) entities (e.g., interoperability mecha-nisms and tools), the roles of those entities (e.g.,coordinator, member, cluster-manager, and bro-ker), the main components that define the properinteraction among entities (e.g., common ontolo-gies, contracts, DBP, distributed multi-tasking, andcollaborative language), the value systems that reg-ulate the evolution of the collaborative association(e.g., collaborative performance records), and theemerging collective behavior (e.g., trust, and team-work), among others.

In the history of science, the recognition andacknowledgement of anomalies has resulted in“crises”, that are the necessary preconditions forthe emergence of novel theories and for a para-digm change or even the rise of a new discipline.Therefore CNs cannot be seen as proprietary toone of these single disciplines, rather representinga new emerging discipline of its own.

As in other past paradigm changes, consider-able research efforts have been focused on iden-tification of “anomaly” aspects for CNs, i.e., theidentification of what is new in the CNs in refer-ence to the established body of knowledge, thathas itself lead to the induction and progressivecharacterization of a new scientific paradigm. Anew scientific discipline emerges once: (i) the newparadigm is adjusted to cover the various man-ifestations of the emerging collaborative forms,(ii) the consolidated set of basic knowledge isorganized, and (iii) the various multi-disciplinaryresearchers involved in this work start to identifythemselves as members of this new community,rather than experts doing research on collabora-tive networks while staying as members of theiroriginal communities and disciplines.

As it has happened many times in the pasthistory of sciences (Kuhn, 1975), it is naturalthat at the beginning of this process various


formulations/interpretations/theories compete (e.g.,the various existing definitions of VO in the lit-erature). This process continues until a compre-hensive definition becomes accepted by a largemajority, namely when eventually the one thatbetter explains the various manifestations of CNswill be settled in this position.

4. Reference disciplines

Disciplines, like the proposed one, are frequentlybased upon other disciplines that can be calledthe reference disciplines or adjacent disciplines(Liles et al., 1995). Developments in CNs havebenefited from contributions of multiple disci-plines, namely computer science, computer engi-neering, communications and networking, man-agement, economy, social sciences, law and ethics,etc. Furthermore some, theories and paradigmsdefined elsewhere have been suggested by severalresearch groups as promising tools to help defineand characterize emerging collaborative organi-zational forms. Examples are (Camarinha-Matosand Afsarmanesh, 2004a):

• Formal theories and modeling of dynamicnetworks — contributing to solve designproblems (architecture, protocols, and net-work creation), specify systems and verifyspecifications focused on correctness andcompleteness, testing and verification ofimplementations.

• Graph theory — contributing to representnetworks of relationships (topology, routing,activity, and flow), and perform computa-tions on flows, optimization, etc.

• Formal engineering methods — contributingto the description of operational behavior ofCN, formulating operational plans that bind-ing partners (consumers / suppliers) in CN,formal verification (if the plans are indeedsatisfied by the operational behavior), etc.

• Semiotics, normative models, and multi-agents— potentially contributing to model theresponsibility relationships and commitments,to prescribe norms, roles and legal support,and capture the system requirements.

• Network analysis and game theory — contrib-uting to the selection of partners, sustaining

cooperation and trust (non-cooperativegame theory), distribution of responsibilityand resources (cooperative game theory),coordination, efficiency, power relationships,and maintenance of ties and reputation(network exchange theory), etc.

• Temporal and modal logic — contributingto the modeling of the operational phaseaspects; and to support synthesis of pro-cesses.

• Metaphors — contributing to the descriptionfor human communication (a possible helpin expressing complex ill-defined concepts);to be used in early stages of analysis (con-ceptual design).

• Theories of complexity — contributing to theanalysis of self-organizing behavior, learn-ing how to manage chaotic dynamics, andprovide insights on CNs behavior (“small-worlds”).

• Dynamic ontologies — unlike static ontolo-gies, dynamic ontologies contribute to thecapture of the evolution of mutual under-standing among members of the network.

More recently researchers have also started tolook into the “soft computing” area in orderto find suitable approaches for modeling aspectsrelated to human behavior in collaborative orga-nizations and to handle the issues of decisionmaking and behavior management in the contextsof incomplete and imprecise knowledge.

Other contributions can potentially be found inareas such as distributed group dynamics, Bayes-ian networks, memetics, transactions theory, etc.As an example, the portfolio of theories and toolsconsidered in the ECOLEAD project are shownin Fig. 4. These disciplines and theories need tobe further investigated in order to determine whatspecific contributions they can bring in to the CNand their level of closeness and appropriateness.

5. Principles and practices

An ordered set of principles and practices formthe foundation of a discipline (Liles et al., 1995).In the case of CNs and their manifestations,a large number of R&D projects and practi-cal implementations have been developed during


Fig. 4. Examples of theories with potential applicability in CNs.

Fig. 5. Examples of past and current European R&D projects related to CNs.

last years. Particularly in Europe, more than 100projects have been supported by the EuropeanCommission, in addition to various national ini-tiatives (see examples in Fig. 5). However, eachone of these efforts has only addressed particu-lar facets of the CNs, leading to some fragmen-tation of research. Furthermore most of the earlyinitiatives were of an ad hoc nature, not relyingon sound theories and principles.

In spite of this ad hoc and fragmented researchsituation, a growing set of principles and practiceshas been collected in many projects and pilotapplications. Figure 6 illustrates some of the com-mon practices applied to the CN development.

At present, the main phases of the lifecycle of a CN are intuitively understood andthe main required support functionalities arebeing identified. It is also nowadays a widely


Fig. 6. Some principles and practices in CNs.

accepted principle that the effective establishmentof dynamic VOs requires an underlying breedingenvironment (or cluster network). A variety ofsuch breeding environments or clusters can alreadybe identified for instance in Europe, Japan, Brazil,and Mexico.

6. Research agenda

A scientific discipline for CNs is characterized bythe existence of an active research agenda wheremany fundamental questions are being tackledand studied. In principle, the existence of anactive research agenda is revealed if the following

three main characteristics exist (Liles et al., 1995):(1) It stands the test of time, (2) It is com-plex and substantial enough to be subdividedinto different research directions, and (3) Multi-ple fundamental questions/approaches are raisedand formulated to guide the research in the area.For the case of collaborative networks the follow-ing situation holds.

1. It stands the test of time. The CNs repre-sent an active research area for more than15 years. During this time a growing num-ber of research projects have been launchedworld-wide and many pilot application casesare being developed in different regions for


a variety of application domains. Definitionof challenges and the research questions arebecoming more precise and detailed, and theirdimension more evident as our knowledgeabout the area accumulates. It is thereforebecoming clear that this is not a temporaryfashion but rather a major area of researchthat continuously grows.

2. It is complex, and substantial enough to be sub-divided into different research directions. CNsrepresent a vast area of research that requiresa subdivision into a number of research areasin order to be studied and handled. This sub-division can be based for instance, on the typeof manifestation (VE/VO, PVC, VL, etc.), oron different technical perspectives (e.g., socio-economic focus, management focus, ICT infra-structure focus, ICT support services focus,and theoretical foundation focus).

3. Multiple fundamental questions/approaches areraised and formulated to guide the researchin the area. A large and growing number ofopen issues and research challenges are beingidentified in the various manifestations of theCNs and their focus areas. These questions areillustrated by a number of research roadmapsrelated to CNs, that are elaborated recently,namely in Europe (Camarinha-Matos and Afs-armanesh, 2004a).

An example of a comprehensive research agendafor CNs is given by the VOmap roadmap foradvanced virtual organizations (Camarinha-Matosand Afsarmanesh, 2003; Camarinha-Matos et al.2004b). VOmap aimed at identifying and char-acterizing the key research challenges needed tofulfill the vision, required constituency, and theimplementation model for a comprehensive Euro-pean initiative on dynamic collaborative VOs. TheVOmap vision is that of an effective transforma-tion of the landscape of European industry intoa society of collaborative relationships. In orderto be efficient and competitive in their operation,VOs of the future have to rely on solid basesand strong methodological approaches. This road-map, which includes contributions from about 100experts from industry and academy, identifies alarge number of the main challenges for researchand development in this area, and suggests a time

frame for the proposed research actions, as shownin Fig. 7.

A substantial part of this roadmap is alsotaken as the starting basis for a new IntegratedProject (ECOLEAD — European CollaborativeOrganizations LEADership Initiative) in the 6thFramework Program of the European Commis-sion (Fig. 8).

The IST THINKcreative project has also iden-tified an ambitious research agenda for CNs(Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh, 2004a),involving a number of areas and disciplines as fol-lows:

• ICT infrastructures. THINKcreative hasidentified the need for technology-inde-pendent reference models for the supportinfrastructures of collaborative networkedorganizations, providing the frameworkfor technical, organizational, and semanticinteroperability. Multi-agent technologyconstitutes a promising contributor to thedevelopment of support infrastructuresand services. Internet and web technologies,namely web services, represent a fast growingsector with large potential in inter-enterprisecollaboration support but further develop-ments in terms of supporting multi-partycollaboration are necessary. A number ofother emerging technologies, e.g., grid, wire-less communications, pervasive computing,location-aware, and situation-aware environ-ments for mobile users, are likely to provideimportant contributions, however publicfunded research should avoid approachesthat are too-biased by existing technologies.

• Non-technologic areas. THINKcreative hasidentified a set of research challenges in thesocio-economic, organizational, and ethicalareas. Topics such as entrepreneurship forCNs in creative economy, mechanisms tosupport creativity and innovation, planningand controlling organization performance,understanding emerging behavior, new busi-ness ethics and morality, are among thosesuggested to be investigated.

• Theoretical foundation. THINKcreativehas identified the urgent need to establisha sound theoretical foundation for CNs.This foundation can start with theories


Fig. 7. VOmap roadmap for strategic research on advanced VOs.


Fig. 8. ECOLEAD research plan.

and models developed in other disciplines,e.g. multi-agent systems, complexity theo-ries, self-organizing systems, graph theory,network analysis and game theory, formalengineering methods, formal theories, tem-poral and modal logic, semiotics, dynamicontologies, metaphors, and others. Asno single formal modeling tool/approachadequately covers all modeling perspec-tives/needs in CNs, interoperability amongdifferent models seems necessary. Given theincreasing importance of the human aspectsin CNs, a new foundation for modelingsocial aspects is also required.

Other roadmaps have also been proposed recently,addressing some of the related research challengesto CNs. For instance, the COCONET roadmap(Schaffers et al., 2003) is focused on virtual com-munities and their cooperation environments, theIDEAS roadmap (Chen and Doumeingts, 2003)addresses needs for supporting interoperability ofICT infrastructures, the Semantic Grid roadmap(Roure et al., 2001) focuses on e-Science andGRID infrastructure needs, and the Assembly-netroadmap (Onori et al., 2003) discusses researchchallenges in advanced collaborative manufactur-ing systems.

7. Education and professionalism

“Community development” through educationand professional associativism is essential to thewidespread recognition of a discipline. Severalactivities that have taken place during last yearshave contributed to the establishment of a signifi-cant community of professionals involved in CNs.Some examples:

• Education activities. Some universitiesalready offer courses on VO/VEs (COVE,2003) (Fig. 9). For instance, the New Univer-sity of Lisbon (Portugal) offers a 1-semestercourse on Virtual Enterprises to the 5thyear students of Electrical and ComputerEngineering since 2002 (Camarinha-Matosand Cardoso, 2004) (Fig. 10). Similarlythe Federal University of Santa Catarina(Brazil) and the Costa Rican Institute ofTechnology (Garita, 2004) started offeringVE/VO courses to their students. Otheruniversities are designing similar coursesor including CN-related modules in theirexisting curricula. An example is given by anAmerican initiative (COVE, 2003) to launcha new course on virtual enterprises involvingthe collaboration of several different uni-versities (forming a virtual institute). Othersimilar example courses are being developedin Europe at the Master program level.

• Scientific associations. Scientific associationsplay an important role as facilitators andpromoters of collaboration among pro-fessionals involved in a specific discipline.


Fig. 9. Examples of courses on CNs and related subjects.

Fig. 10. The structure of the course on VEs at UNL.

Some initiatives in this area have beenlaunched in recent years. For instance, atthe IFIP (International Federation for Infor-mation Processing) level, a Working Groupon Infrastructures for Vs and e-Business(COVE — CO-operation infrastructure forVs and electronic business) was establishedunder its Technical Committee 5 [www.uni-nova.pt/∼cove]. Another example is theESoCEnet (European Society of ConcurrentEnterprising Network) established in Italy[www.esoce.net].

• Conferences. Professional and scientificconferences provide a forum to discusscurrent thoughts and experiences, as well asa channel to publish emerging ideas. The

IFIP Working Conference series PRO-VE[www.pro-ve.org], the first yearly conferencefocused on Virtual Enterprises started in1999, and since then has established itself asthe reference conference and most focusedscientific event on CNs, attracting a goodnumber of professionals from academiaand industry. Another related event, morefocused on the Concurrent/CollaborativeEngineering aspects is the ICE conference[www.ice-conference.org].

• Journals. Scientific journals represent themost traditional channel to publish matureresults in any scientific field. Currently, thelack of a scientific journal for CNs repre-sents a major difficulty for the CN commu-nity. The lack of a well-established journalin this area forces researchers to publishtheir results in diverse journals from otherdisciplines, what greatly reduces their poten-tial impact. Nevertheless, some special issueson VE/VO have been already published bydifferent journals such as Computers inIndustry, IJ of Intelligent Manufacturing, IJof Computer Integrated Manufacturing, etc.An attempt to launch an electronic journalon VO faced the typical difficulties of otherelectronic publications that do not seem ableto survive [www.virtual-organization.net/]. Amore recent initiative, the IJ of Networkingand VO, offers a proper scope for publishing


CN results, but it is still unclear whether itwill become a major journal. Therefore, afocused and well-reputed journal focused onCNs is still needed for this community.

These examples illustrate the trends in the CNcommunity building process, which give a goodbasis for the sustainability of the new discipline.The establishment of CN as a recognized scien-tific discipline will likely have a boosting effect onthese activities.

8. Conclusions

A growing number of collaborative-networkedorganization forms are emerging as a result ofthe advances in the information and communica-tion technologies, the market and societal needs,and the progress achieved in a large number ofinternational projects. The accumulated body ofempiric knowledge and the size of the involvedresearch community provide the important pre-conditions for the foundation of a new scientificdiscipline of CNs. This paper introduced an over-view of the area and a reflection on the currenttrends, thus contributing to the characterizationof the new discipline. The main characteristics ofthe discipline were analyzed showing that the pre-conditions necessary for building this new disci-pline are available. Complementarily, an attemptto inter-relate a number of different collabora-tive organizational forms that are seen as mani-festations of the same phenomena was made. Theorganization of such discipline is likely to have aboosting effect in the development and consolida-tion of the area, both in terms of research, andpractical implantation.

Furthermore, this process, leading to the estab-lishment of a scientific discipline, is likely to bringa number of advantages to the progress of the area:

– In order to gain strength, when free fromthe assumptions of other specific disciplinesthat were contributing to the area, the asso-ciated body of knowledge will get morefocused and organized.

– Researchers will dedicate their energy tomany challenging issues raised by the newarea instead of fighting their colleagues

from other disciplines, either trying toclaim the ownership of the area, or toprove the primacy of their former basediscipline in tackling these challenges.

– Researchers will get/build new instrumentsto get their work recognized and respectedin the established academia such as:

• A well delimited scope of their activity.Nowadays, due to its multi-disciplinarynature, research on CN tends to not be wellaccepted by the “traditional” disciplines.For instance, some groups in the computerscience area have not yet fully acceptedthis research area, because it involves socialsciences, management, manufacturing, andindustrial engineering. At the same time, forinstance the management area has not fullyaccepted it because it has strong involvementwith technology and the computer sciencearea. For a scientific discipline to be recog-nized, it needs to have unique principles andpractices, and a research community thatgenerates its own literature and supports itseducation.

• Well-established communication and interac-tion channels. Conferences, journals, praxis,professional associations, etc. shall form thebasis for sustaining the associated researchcommunity.

The CNs are already recognized in the society asa very important instrument for survival of orga-nizations in a period of turbulent socio-economicchanges. Thus, seizing the opportunity to structurethis area as a new scientific discipline is a majorchallenge for the associated research community.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by the Euro-pean Commission through the THINKcreative,VOmap, and ECOLEAD projects. The authorsthank the contributions of their partners in theseprojects.

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